Winner: 'How Green Was My Valley' (won in 1942)Robbed: 'Citizen Kane'
The Academy has always favoured sap over substance. (Still does - see 'Titanic' sinking 'LA Confidential' in 1998.) Which is why a film about do-good Welsh mining folk beat out Orson Welles's deconstruction of an egomaniacal publisher. Oh, and it couldn't have helped that Hollywood bigfoot Louis B Mayer - the original Harvey Weinstein - had it in for the film, which ended up taking only screenplay honours.

2/10

Winner: 'My Fair Lady' (1965)Robbed: 'Dr Strangelove' or: 'How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb'
That Kubrick's still timely Cold War classic was derailed once by a musical is criminal. That it happened again four years later, when 'Oliver!' beat 2001: 'A Space Odyssey' - not even nominated! - proves the Academy never learns. Lovely.

3/10

Winner: Rod Steiger, 'In The Heat Of The Night' (1968)Robbed: Paul Newman, 'Cool Hand Luke'
Newman had played the antihero before, in 'Hud And The Hustler', but 'Cool Hand Luke' was something more: a social commentary starring Newman as ?the original champion of the antiestablishment - ie, Jesus - (as an allegory, anyway). Newman would later win for the inferior '?The Color Of Money', confirming the biggest complaint about the Academy: Oscar rewards the right people for the wrong films.

4/10

Winner: Ben Kingsley, 'Gandhi' (1983)Robbed: Dustin Hoffman, 'Tootsie'
Politics - it's tough to vote against Mahatma. But Hoffman created a character just as indelible. If comedy is harder than drama, why don't laughs win Oscars?

5/10

Winner: Al Pacino, 'Scent Of A Woman' (1993)Robbed: Robert Downey Jr, 'Chaplin'; Denzel Washington, 'Malcolm X'; Stephen Rea, 'The Crying Game'; Clint Eastwood, 'Unforgiven'
Hoo-ah! Passed over for 'The Godfather' (twice) and 'Serpico', Pacino finally has his day on a night when his performance was eclipsed by every other actor in his category. Most screwed: Downey. But then again, Chaplin himself never won a non-honorary acting Oscar.

6/10

Winner: 'Forrest Gump' (1995)Robbed: 'Pulp Fiction'
When was the last time you heard someone describe a film as Zemeckis-esque?

7/10

Winner: Roberto Benigni, 'Life Is Beautiful' (1999)Robbed: Ian McKellen, 'Gods And Monsters'
The Miramax Oscar machine goes into overdrive promoting a feel-good movie about the cutest kid at the concentration camp. Perhaps if Ian McKellen weren't actually gay but just pretending in this haunting biopic about swishy 'Frankenstein' director James Whale, he might have won. (See Hanks in 'Philadelphia'; Swank in Boys 'Don't Cry'; Theron in 'Monster'; Hurt in 'Kiss of the Spider Woman'.)

8/10

Winner: Sean Penn, 'Mystic River' (2004)Robbed: Bill Murray, 'Lost In Translation'
Hollywood's greasiest ham upstages a subtler Murray, who gave the performance of his career as an aging Hollywood actor turning Japanese. Murray took it like a punch to the gut. So did we.

9/10

Winners: Robert Redford, 'Ordinary People' (1981); Kevin Costner, 'Dances With Wolves' (1991); Roman Polanski, 'The Pianist' (2003); Clint Eastwood, 'Million Dollar Baby' (2005)Robbed: Martin Scorsese, 'Raging Bull', 'GoodFellas', 'Gangs Of New York', 'The Aviator'
Scorsese should have won for 'Gangs' on principle alone. That he was dismissed again, losing out to the criminally overpraised 'Baby', was just salt in the wound. But hey, it's a good thing Ben Affleck has an Oscar.

10/10

Winner: 'Ray', for sound mixing (2005)Robbed: 'The Incredibles'
When a spaceship flies across the screen, the engine roar moves from your left ear to your right (cool!). Thats sound mixing. 'The Incredibles got hosed,' says Michael Ungar, a senior mixer at Manhattan's Broadway Video. 'You've got something zipping around your head, hundreds of effects, and dialogue. Theres a lot more going on. It's much more difficult. It should have gotten Best Picture, for that matter.'